It would be nice if they had the kind of documentation that modern games get where you can see quickly by looking at a Wikia page whether a given NPC has a quest attached to them.
The Big World mod and several others solved this by moving some of the NPCs from Baldur’s Gate proper out in the wilderness - Quayle, Tiax & Kagain in particular. I think Skie and Alora were left inside due to their own plots.
[QUOTE=Chimera]
When I spot an enemy, I flick an arrow at it and then retreat to the group. Single enemy follows, gets slaughtered by the group. Rinse and repeat to take care of larger groups of Hobgoblins, bandits, etc.
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This (and the AoE cheese mentioned by RNATB) got fixed in the Icewind Dale games, and backported to BG along with tons of other small behaviour tweaks in the various Tactics mods.
[QUOTE=Johnny Angel]
So, besides the classic root-n-nuke suite, and the summoning, and the occasional need to defend your mage with Mirror Image and such, what should a standard party’s load out include?
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Dispel Magic. Breach. Lower Resistance. Greater Malison.
Long duration buffs to the party - Bless, Armor, Barkskin, Stoneskin, Hope, Strength… pretty much everything that has a duration listed in “turns” or “hours” is really worth memorizing and casting after any rest if you expect any sort of melee trouble.
I usually also set aside one or two slots for Knock, one for Invisibility/Sanctuary for those OHSHIT moments, and in BG2 one for Circle of Protection from Evil in case I or someone else might wind up casting a Gate/summon demons.
Otiluke’s Sphere can be a bit annoying, but it’s also super versatile and saved my ass more times than I can count, either by separating a boss from his minions for piecemeal disposal or preventing the death of characters trapped behind enemy lines.
Mind Blank (or whatever the spell was that protects from any and all mental effects like Charm, Confusion etc…) is a must have if you think you might face Sirens, Mind-Flayers etc… and True Sight or at least Glitterdust if you’re expecting spellcasters who will likely abuse the shit out of Dimension Door & similar.
Sleep is THE killer spell at low levels, even if BG doesn’t have coups de grâce. When enemies become too high level to be affected, switch for Blind which is also pretty much a save-or-die spell (albeit single target) only it’s a level 1 spell so you can have tons of casts and that bad guy WILL roll a 1 on his save. Eventually.
Hold Person is also one of the key offensive cleric spells IMO.
Charm Person/Animal/Monster are also great, I’d rate those higher than summoning actually simply because while summoning adds 1 to your side, a successful charm adds 1 to your side AND substracts 1 from the other. The downside, of course, is that they only work some of the time.
The Druid spell Insect Plague (and later Creeping Doom) is *insanely *good. I’d consider having a Druid in my party just for it, once the average party XP is 90.000+ that is. Low-level Druids can be… usefulness challenged 
I remember a remarkable change in behavior that made it more difficult to pull individuals in the Icewind Dale games. It also made it easier to recover from a bad pull, because creatures were more likely to go back where they were, so it didn’t change the tactic much in the end.
In BGII there’s a hair pin or something that does Otiluke’s Sphere three times a day. I would send some chump forward to draw fire, then turn invulnerable, then stand there laughing off attacks while the rest of the party took down the enemy with missile fire.
Ah, yes. I remember having to cast this on everyone just so that they could cross the street in Baldur’s Gate II without being charmed by goddamned vampires.
While there aren’t a lot of bad spells, some are more useful more often.
Chromatic Orb is basically a trade-off against Magic Missile. I like to start swapping over around level 5, although I do keep a Magic Missile handy for use against enemy spellcasters.
Haste is fantastic. Throw that on a well-built warrior-type and you can hack through most enemies in the game without breaking a sweat.
Hold Monster is basically a high-level Sleep.
The spells which don’t do so well are those which duplicate existing spells of the same level, but are less effective. Color Spray & Glitterdust are mostly just weak versions of sleep, though they both have occaisional uses and may be extremely useful to specialist wizards who don’t have access to every school. Ray of Weakness, likewise, is a good spell on its own, but you may as well cast Blind because it’s simply more useful in most cases.
Some have specialty effects with very limited purposes. I like having Mirroreyes in the book, for example, but you may never need it between potions and scrolls - there aren’t that many things with gaze attacks, ferinstance, and they tend to be heavily concentrated in one or two zones.
Of course, come Baldur’s Gate 2 there are no useless spells, since you can always scribe them for xp, erase, and repeat. 
I vastly prefer Chromatic Orb. About the same damage potential and casting time, plus a chance of holding the victim. I like Haste, but I prefer BGII because it gives you lots of boots of speed and you don’t have to bother. So far I’ve only found one set in BGI.
I’d never really tried using Blind before. Will have to give that a go.
Doesn’t Chromatic Orb do no damage on a save? I don’t think I ever had Chromatic Orb do any damage, so I gave up on it…
No, it just doesn’t have the secondary effect on a save.
The default AI is quite bad for enemy magic users. I’m using the two Sword Coast Stratagem mods, which drastically improve the AI and optionally can change many other things for Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2.
Here’s something I don’t remember from previous play-throughs: I just pickpocketed Twinkle and Icing Death from Drizzt Do’Urden. Did I really never try that before?
An NPC should appear that will automatically take those weapons from you, although that might only happen if you killed Drizzt.
I don’t think the Boots of Speed give you the armor bonus and the extra attack that haste does.
Well, the way I’m running around flaunting the damned things, it’s as much as I deserve.
Still, once you no longer need the sneaking bonuses, it’s nice to have some permanent speed on your rogue for one of my favorite tactics – backstabbing, then running around the corner to hide in preparation for another backstab.
For more tactics and strategy, I prefer the guides/walkthroughs written by Haeravon.
I am not affiliated with him.
I thought Icingdeath was renamed Frostbrand or something in the game. Maybe I’m thinking of BGII. Are they any good?
Extra attack, but not armor.
Now I’m really pissed off about…
…the fact that you can only get a longsword better than the +1 from one guy, at one specific moment, and I didn’t. :mad:
That’s…interesting. I seem to have mixed up the BG version of Haste with the 3.x/PF version of Haste.
+3 Scimitars Both. Icingdeath gives +50% fire resistance. Twinkle gives AC +2, which apparently stacks with my ring, as the AC from armor generally doesn’t (good alignment required). Good enough to give you a reason to spec out somebody in your party with Scimitar/Wakizashi/Ninjatō proficiency, possibly the main character right from the beginning.
iPad version is live on iTunes, $9.99. I think Dorn and Neesa are available separately as DLC for a couple bucks each.
They also have the extra portraits for sale as well, don’t know how much though.
I tried out the tutorial portion on my train ride in to work this morning, using my iPad 2. It ran like a dream (per the devs, this is probably not true on an iPad 1), and the battery was still at 100% after maybe 15 minutes. Pausing is controlled by the sun/moon time button in the lower left, and the “hint” function usually accessed via the Tab key is its own “Hint” button in the lower right near the party controls buttons, denoted by a magnifying glass examining a square.
Yeah, one thing I’ve noticed is that there are plenty of magic scimitars and katanas in the game, even though it has the same “magic katanas are extremely rare in the realms” warning as BGII.
I’m pretty sure that in the original Baldur’s Gate they just made you run fast. The Baldur’s Gate II boots were way better.
Might be something they added for the EE, then. My character is definitely attacking extra.